


Thus We Remember Avalon

by gingertart50



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adultery, Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingertart50/pseuds/gingertart50
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wizarding World is unforgiving of adultery and Harry is very concerned for his best friend, as Hermione risks her career and family when an Unfathomable tempts her away from Ron. But why is Harry's memory playing tricks on him, and what of Harry's own reputation? The clues lead him to the Avalon Inn in Knockturn Alley and what he finds there will turn his world upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thus We Remember Avalon

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to lovetoseverus, punctuation-wrestler and plot-bunny wrangler without peer. This story resulted from listening to Matt Monro's "Walk Away" and Cliff Richard's "Miss You Nights" and remembering another age, when men could be imprisoned for homosexuality and women accused of adultery lost their livelihoods, reputations and homes as well as their families. I rather think that the Wizarding World would still be very old-fashioned about such things…

Ron barged into Harry's office on a gust of air that smelled of crushed grass, fresh male sweat and Humphrey Gotobed's _Best-Ever Broom Pomade_. He subsided into the visitor's chair and waved his wand to shut the door.

'Problem?' Harry enquired, pushing aside his quill and a bundle of crime reports.

'Dunno,' Ron said, running his fingers back through his damp hair so that it stood up like a cock's comb. He stared out of the window and chewed on his lower lip. Harry sighed, stood up and went over to the table in the corner.

'Tea?' he suggested and Ron shrugged.

'Got anything stronger?'

'Not at work,' Harry said rather primly. Ron snorted.

'Suppose the _Assistant Chief Auror_ ought to set a good example,' he conceded. 'Thanks.' He stirred an almost obscene amount of sugar and milk into the mug and took a deep swig. 'I'm not sure if I'm imagining it or not, but I've got this feeling that things aren't right. You know?'

Having spent the majority of his adolescence in exactly that state of mind, Harry refrained from rolling his eyes with an effort. The sooner Ron got whatever it was off his chest, the sooner Harry could finish his paperwork, escape the office and get on with some real Auror-ing.

'You coach the Chudley Cannons, mate,' Harry pointed out, 'aren't you used to things not feeling right?'

'Ha bloody ha, very funny. No, it's Hermione.'

Harry felt the little hairs prickle on the back of his neck and wondered if he ought to delay the rest of this conversation until Ginny got home from her latest tour with the Harpies.

'Is she ok?' he asked warily.

'Far as I know.' Ron took a deep breath. 'I think she's having an affair.'

'Oh.'

'Oh? Anything a bit more, like, _helpful_ to add there?'

'Pot, kettle?'

'Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? A bloke needs a safety valve sometimes, let off a bit of steam, be one of the lads…' he allowed his voice to trail off and had the decency to blush and cover his embarrassment by slurping his tea. 'It wasn't serious!' he added somewhat defensively.

'Perhaps what Hermione's doing isn't serious, either.'

'Since when have you been a model of propriety, Harry Potter?' Ron grumbled.

'Oh, how about since I married your sister and had three kids? What're you asking me to do, Ron? Gin's the one for tea and sympathy but I don't think she'll be terribly sympathetic in this case, not after hearing all the rumours about you and your Quidditch groupies. And I'm certainly not going to confront Hermione about it.'

'Circe's knickers, no! I want you to do a bit of checking up –'

'You want me to investigate Hermione?' Harry could feel his face heating with anger and Ron obviously realised that he had overstepped an invisible mark. He held up his hands in a placatory gesture.

'I just want to make sure she's not going to do something daft.'

'Like run off with someone who would actually be faithful to her and appreciate her, you mean?'

Ron narrowed his eyes. 'Right, I can see whose fucking side you're on, Harry. Thanks for that.'

'I'm not on anyone's side,' Harry snapped, 'except Rose and Hugo's. What am I supposed to say when Hermione finds out I'm snooping on her? She'll have every right to be furious.'

'You hear about what goes on, ok? Dad always said the Ministry was rife with gossip.'

'What happens in the Department of Mysteries stays in the Department of Mysteries. It isn't easy to find out what those buggers get up to even when it's my job to know! Merlin knows how they'd react if I sneaked around trying to find out who's shagging who in the basement.'

'Just keep an eye and an ear open?' Ron resorted to wheedling – not a pretty sight.

'And what do I say if she retaliates by asking about you and Mercy Proctor?'

Ron went beet red; even the tips of his ears flamed.

'Don't you dare tell Hermione!'

'I don't need to. You're married to one of the brightest witches of the age, she already knows about Mercy Proctor, and probably about Di Postlethwaite and Fiona Caruthers as well.'

The blood drained from Ron's face, leaving his freckles standing out on pasty skin.

'Oh, shit. Are you sure?'

'We're her friends, too. Ginny and I didn't need to tell her; she told us, or at least, she said what she suspected but she didn't really want us to confirm it. She wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.'

'Which is what you want me to give her,' Ron said, with one of the flashes of maturity that occasionally still took Harry by surprise.

'Yeah. Don't rock the boat any more, not until Rose and Hugo are old enough to cope with it, and preferably after they've left home.'

Ron nodded reluctantly. He spent a lot of time away on tour during the Quidditch season, then wildly overindulged his children when he got back, much to Hermione's exasperation, but he did love Rose and Hugo deeply. Harry suspected that the decision to stop at two was entirely Hermione's – not that he blamed her, she would never be a Molly Weasley earth-mother witch.

'I suppose so. Just let me know if you hear anything.'

'Yeah,' Harry sighed. 'Now bugger off and let me get on with my reports, will you? I'll see you down the pub with George on Friday.'

'Thanks, mate!' Ron said cheerfully, as though Harry had agreed to put an entire team onto investigating Hermione that very day, and breezed out as if he hadn't a care in the world.

 

oooOOOooo

Harry had not worked his way up through the ranks of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on his reputation alone. Enough people had resented his fame to deliberately make life difficult for him, so he responded by becoming very, very good at his job. He had got where he was through hard graft, willingness to learn, the ability to persevere in the face of opposition, and his intuition. It was this instinct for subterfuge, what he thought of as his "Slytherin radar," that he now directed onto Hermione. She was a Gryffindor with a strong dose of Ravenclaw, a smattering of Hufflepuff and no Slytherin whatsoever, so she ought to have been easy to catch out. In fact, she was incredibly circumspect and it took him some weeks to even gain a hint of her extra-curricular activities. He wondered if she had been taking lessons in Slytherin-ese.

Harry decided to revisit an old unsolved crime that had occurred two years after the end of the war: the disappearance of an Unspeakable named Jonathan Steed. His investigations gave him a legitimate reason to visit Hermione's department. There was little pattern to Hermione's activities, few absences that could not be explained by shopping trips or visits to friends. If Harry had not known her so well, he would have missed the slight spring in her step, and the moderation of an irritability that had come to characterise his friend. He was rather distressed to realise that she had been unhappy for years and he had failed to realise it, or perhaps he had not allowed himself to see that Hermione's life was not the perfect domestic bliss that she deserved. She had been miserable and now she seemed cheerful, if slightly twitchy. Harry found himself with a dilemma. Should he report his findings to Ron, and risk ruining Hermione's rediscovered zest for life? Or should he simply leave things as they were? His instincts warned him that the status quo was fragile. The more he knew, the more he was likely to salvage something from the looming mess. He had to face the fact that he was nosy. He was also just a tiny bit jealous.

Harry adored his kids with a deep, fierce, abiding love that had hit him with James' birth and never gone away. It was this love that had urged him to do what he could to keep the peace between Ron and Hermione, for the sakes of Rose and Hugo. It convinced him to be happy with the fact that Ginny was away for half the year with the Harpies. And it turned a blind eye to the possibility that he was no longer in love with his wife, that he liked her a lot and cared for her but that the initial sexual attraction between them had cooled – and what remained was not the warm contentment that he had expected, but an aching void. One day, when he either found someone to reignite the fire or when he faced up to the fact that he and Ginny no longer desired one another, he might ask her what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. He suspected that her plans would not include him.

His own vision of his future was nebulous. Occasionally, Harry imagined a relationship with someone who made him feel _alive_ in a way that Ginny never did. This mysterious person pulled out all his insecurities and his secret desires and laid them bare. In fleeting dreams that disintegrated like cobwebs in his grasp, he felt masculine yet overpowered, strong yet vulnerable, needy yet desired. He never recalled dreaming of the face of his fantasy lover, only catching glimpses of pale fingers grasping his hip, a lean shoulder bared in candlelight or the twilit gleam of a dark-adjusted eye.

Unlike Harry, Hermione had grasped the nettle. She had stepped outside the box into which the Wizarding World had placed her: hero-wife-mother-Unspeakable, and risked everything for love. Harry looked at his own box (hero-husband-father-Auror) and accepted that it was no longer where he wanted to be. He was simultaneously angry with Hermione and envious of her, anxious about her future and exhilarated by her courage. Neither society nor the press would treat her kindly if they found out; it was a regrettable fact that witches were held to a different standard than wizards when it came to extra-marital sexual activities. A wizard who played around was regarded as "a bit of a lad," while a witch, once settled down to marriage and a family, was expected to set a good example for her children. An accusation of adultery would put an end to Hermione's position in polite society and probably destroy her career in the Ministry; she would become as much a social pariah as would a convicted criminal, a prostitute or a homosexual. Sometimes Harry and Hermione speculated together about how they might one day kick the Wizarding World into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first.

One thing Harry soon knew for sure: Hermione was seeing someone within her own department. This suggested that she had not set out to deliberately cuckold Ron, but that she had fallen for a co-worker. It made sense; the Unspeakables were recruited from the very brightest of witches and wizards, and he understood how Hermione might be tempted by someone of her own intellectual calibre. In the course of his investigation into the vanishing Unspeakable, Harry watched her interact with her fellows and realised that whoever her lover was, he was certainly not one of the group of eccentrics who dealt with the general public. He had to be a research wizard, an Unfathomable. To get anywhere near that lot, Harry would need to pull rank.

 

oooOOOooo

  
'I want to see the departmental staffing records,' Harry said, waving a sheaf of parchment under Hermione's nose. There it was, the slightest flicker of unease before she gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes.

'You need to speak to Adrian Havering,' she told him. 'Second floor down, somewhere on the orange corridor. He shares offices with either Dougie George or Monica Swingler – it depends on what they're up to and who needs to be closest to the archives.'

'Could the other two help?'

'I doubt it; they're Chronomages, they study time and need to access the historical records. Adrian's the personnel officer.'

'Thanks.' Harry resisted the temptation to tell her that he was still investigating the disappearance of Jonathan Steed. He had no need to make excuses; doing so would simply arouse her suspicions.

'Are you getting anywhere?' Hermione asked casually – too casually, in Harry's opinion.

'Not sure,' he said, matching her for insouciance. 'I'm just following my nose.' He tapped the side of the aforementioned appendage. Hermione gave a little twitch and the invisible antennae of Harry's subterfuge-radar positively quivered. She really did not want him to go down to the archives. He winked at her and sauntered out of her office.

Adrian Havering did not know Harry very well. He appeared initially impressed when Harry turned on his public persona, that of the famous, well-meaning and enthusiastic Auror with a suggestion that he might actually be rather inept. Most people were all too willing to believe in his incompetence; a gratifying number of the more unsavoury ones now languished in Azkaban.

Adrian guided Harry into the archives, showed him the filing cabinet that housed the shrunken staff records, gave him a quick description of the filing system that he obviously did not expect Harry to understand and left him to it.

' _Accio Unfathomable records_ ,' Harry said, pointing his wand. He heard the slight catch in Havering's receding footsteps that revealed his amusement, and waited until the wizard had gone before allowing the tip of his wand to sketch a cipher in the air. The wards recognised his authority and obligingly disgorged a large file. Harry placed it upon the reading desk and began unshrinking its contents.

After three hours, Harry leaned his elbows on the desk and stared at his page of notes. He was sure that "Jonathan Steed" had been an assumed identity. The investigation of his disappearance had been given to a junior Auror who had not possessed the authority to access the high-security files, probably in the hope that the case would languish and ultimately be dropped.

Someone had tried to erase all indications of Steed's presence and either overlooked one of his colleagues, or else their _Obliviation_ had failed and an Unspeakable had reported his disappearance.

Harry had been in training at the time, and the case had been assigned by none other than Kingsley Shacklebolt himself.

The last person to access Steed's file was Hermione Granger-Weasley, around the time when she had lifted herself out of her slough of marital despond and begun taking an interest in life again.

'Two birds, one stone,' Harry muttered, shrinking the files and replacing them. It was against the rules to erase his magical signature from the high-security file, but he was allowed to encrypt it and place a marker that would alert him if anyone attempted to follow his investigation.

As he made his way out of the labyrinthine department back to the airy heights of MLE, Harry pondered his next move. Kingsley knew who "Jonathan Steed" really was, but asking him might draw unwanted attention to the man, and by association, to Hermione. Harry could confront her, but he disliked that idea, partly because he was not yet sure if her relationship with Steed was a sexual one, and partly because he wanted to avoid distressing his friend. But mainly it was because he was just too damned nosy to drop the investigation yet. He wanted to go at it from another direction first. What kind of a man was Steed?

 

oooOOOooo

  
Steed had not been a very successful member of the Unspeakables' service team. There were complaints in the files about his brusque manner towards the general public and he had been downright rude to his colleagues. His first appraisal ended with the words: 'A brilliant wizard, too valuable to lose, too volatile for a front-desk position. For Merlin's sake, make him an Unfathomable and take him off my hands!'

Steed had disappeared not long before four new Unfathomables had been recruited: Emrys Peel, Tony Markham, Persephone Prendergast and Maximilian Dauntless.

Harry snorted and almost choked on his mug of tea.

'Steed to Peel? Oh, for Merlin's sake, the man's Muggle-raised!'

'I beg your pardon?' enquired the painting of an African grey parrot over his fireplace.

'John Steed and Emma Peel are characters from The Avengers, a classy nineteen-sixties Muggle television secret-agent series. My aunt used to watch the reruns,' Harry said.

'Is that important?'

'It's a bloody good indicator.'

'Is it really?'

'Oh, shut up!'

'Only trying to help! Who's a pretty polly? Awkk!'

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry waited until late at night before returning to the archives and committing Emrys Peel's details to memory. He was about to look through a bunch of other files at random to plaster the indicators of his presence all over the lot when he heard footsteps. A flick of his wand put the entire filing cabinet to rights, then he pulled his Invisibility Cloak over his head and crouched down beneath the reading desk.

'Hello?' The voice was hesitant but unmistakeably Hermione's. She let out a breath and walked across the room. Harry heard a faint squeak as she pulled open the filing cabinet, then she whispered the spells to lift the wards. Just as Harry wondered if he should pre-empt her discovery of his magical signature and reveal himself, he caught the sharp, distinctly masculine tapping of boot-heels in the corridor. Hermione heard them, too; she swiftly closed the drawer and he saw the light from her wand as she turned to face the newcomer.

'Oh,' she said, and lowered her wand. 'I thought it might be you.'

'Has Potter rummaged in my file again?'

Harry barely heard Hermione's reply. He was swept away into the past, as that voice reached out to him across the years and dragged him back to the dungeons of Hogwarts. He was eleven, filled with wonder and optimism as he listened to a promise of brewed fame and bottled glory; he was fifteen, filled with rage at the bullying Professor who made his life hell; he was seventeen, watching as a man bled out his life and his memories upon a filthy, wooden floor. There were other associations, too many to process: a flickering candle upon a battered table, a raised wand, a dirty tumbler of smoking firewhisky, a mingled scent of potions, tobacco and English Leather aftershave.

Harry's mind seemed to snap back into focus. All the bits and pieces, facts and inferences, broke apart and came back together into a new configuration. Naturally Kingsley would have hidden him, the Ministry would want his expertise and experience, and Hermione would eventually discover him and be drawn to him. He was Snape: the Half Blood Prince, the Avenger, the Potions Master, the consummate Slytherin. He was alive. God, Snape was alive! Harry bit his own knuckle in an attempt to stifle his emotions. He ought to have felt shock, yet his overriding feeling was one of longing, as if he was nostalgic for the days when he had been aimed like an arrow towards his confrontation with Voldemort, when Snape had been his public enemy and secret ally. Why did he yearn to hear that snide and silken voice again?

'Of course he will,' Snape sighed in the disparaging way that Harry knew so well, 'he's Potter. He's bound to keep digging away like a Niffler after gold. You'll need to do something to distract him; send him on an impossible quest or two, he's used to those.'

Hermione laughed. How many years was it since Harry had heard her sound so carefree and amused?

'Harry's changed, you know, we've all grown up.'

'Yes, he might have grown up, but has he matured enough to stop and think before leaping in with his wand blazing? I suspect not. Potter has always been ruled by his damned emotions.'

Harry held his breath and stretched out so that he could see past the rim of the desk. In the dim glow of the night-time security lighting, Snape's profile was unmistakeable. He had aged, of course, but Snape seemed to have managed it more gracefully than most. His once inky hair was streaked with iron grey, he had put on a little weight, and his strong, distinctive nose and cheekbones suited the mature man that he was, as if he had grown into his features at last. The lines around his eyes were deeper, but they suggested that he was capable of smiling as well as sneering, that he could laugh as well as scowl. He would never be handsome, yet to Harry, the passage of time had erased Snape's ugliness, stripping him back to the essential wizard: powerful and strangely compelling.

'You'd be surprised,' Hermione said, loyal as ever. Snape reached out and placed a finger beneath her chin, tilting up her head.

'Why are we talking about Potter, the bane of my entire bloody existence?' he asked. 'We always end up talking about Potter.' There was a strange note in his voice, something almost wistful.

Hermione huffed but did not pull away. 'When are you going to accept that the bane of your life was always Voldemort? You declared Harry your enemy because you hated his father. He was a little boy, all of eleven years old, who knew nothing of his parents or the Wizarding world. You were a bully and you were utterly unfair!'

'I'm not a fair man,' Snape told her. Harry held his breath. He could feel the tension thrumming between the two of them. Whether or not it had been consummated, this was a highly charged sexual relationship. Snape took a step that brought him chest to chest with Hermione, so that their robes touched, and he could gaze down into her face. 'I've never been a fair man,' he whispered, and leaned down and closed his mouth over hers.

Harry seemed to hear Snape's voice continuing in his mind, murmuring muffled words like echoes of a long-forgotten conversation that surely could never have taken place in Hogwarts. 'Neither has fate been fair or kind to me,' Snape's voice seemed to say, 'except in these stolen moments with you, in our Avalon.' When could he possibly have heard Snape say that?

Trapped beneath the desk, Harry barely breathed and dared not move. He had no choice but to watch as Hermione wound her arms around Snape's neck. He could see Snape's slim hand splayed across her back, like a pale starfish against the darkness of her work robe. It tightened, grasping the fabric and crumpling it as he pulled her against him. She made a small sound, of eagerness and of frustration.

Harry ought to have been as embarrassed as he had been when he saw Ron groping Hermione as a teen. He should have felt guilty and uncomfortable, should have looked away, but all he could think of was the power of the connection between these two. He had never fancied Hermione; he loved her as he imagined he would have loved a sister, in the asexual way that he had grown to love Molly Weasley or Minerva McGonagall, or indeed, in the way that he loved Ron and the rest of the Weasley brothers. He admired Hermione; he could see that she had matured into a very attractive witch, with her lush curves and the intelligence shining in her eyes. However, it was not Hermione who aroused him now, but the heat between her and Snape, a fire that had never seemed to ignite when she was with Ron – or, Harry had to admit, when he was with Ginny.

What the hell was it about Snape? When Harry was at Hogwarts, the idea of the Dungeon Bat in any sexual relationship at all would have seemed ludicrous. Finding out that Snape had loved Lily Evans was something of an eye-opener, but teenaged Harry assumed that the relationship was a one-sided, romanticised yearning spiced with adolescent angst, perhaps involving one or two sweet, stolen kisses before Lily found True Love with James Potter. Aged seventeen, Harry had concluded that Snape died a virgin.

The wizard who was sliding his hand up Hermione's thigh beneath her robe, who was plundering her mouth and pressing her back against the wall, was no romantic naïf. He was a practised sexual predator – not that Hermione was acting at all like helpless prey.

'Severus,' she gasped.

'That is no longer my name,' he murmured against her neck. 'Do I need to Obliviate you, Mrs Weasley?'

'Don't you dare! Besides, it's your own fault for dropping your disguise.'

He chuckled, a rich, deep laugh that made Harry shiver with its sheer sensuality. 'No, you'd only go and rediscover me in the basement and I would be forced to resist you or else be seduced again.'

Hermione snorted.

'Oh, yes, of course you're the poor, blameless wizard who fell for my feminine wiles. Who seduced whom here? Stop it! I'm not young enough to enjoy being shagged against a wall; can we take this somewhere a bit more civilised, Master Peel?'

'Certainly, my dear.' His voice was a purr filled with wicked promise.

Once they had gone, Harry sank down, slipped a hand inside his robes and brought himself off with a dozen swift, hard strokes. He leaned his head back against the wall as his heart slowed down to something near a normal rate, and resolved to forget about his inappropriate arousal as soon as possible – or, if all else failed, with self-Obliviation. Beneath his sexual desire was a tumult of emotions: anger and envy and an inexplicable, aching sense of grief.

 

oooOOOooo

  
'Hermione still feels guilty about greasy old Snape,' Ron said. Harry choked on his pint and almost sprayed George with a mouthful of bitter.

'What?' Harry gasped, once he had Banished the spilt beer.

'She had a nightmare about leaving Snape in the Shack,' Ron explained, tearing open a packet of salted peanuts and offering them around. 'Called his name in her sleep. Funny how these things come back to haunt you, isn't it? You'd have thought she'd feel worse about being unable to save Fred or Remus or Tonks or poor little Colin Creevey, not some miserable old git with greasy hair and a foul temper.'

'At least she doesn't feel guilty about Mouldy Shorts or Hell's Bella,' George pointed out. 'That's when you should be worried.'

'That's true,' Ron agreed.

'We wouldn't have won if it hadn't been for Snape,' Harry said, because that was what he usually said whenever Snape was mentioned, 'and a lot more people would have died. Anyway, he's the only one she might have had a chance of saving, if she'd tried.'

'Doesn't mean he wasn't a git,' Ron replied, as he always did, and George laughed and went to get the next round in.

'Got anywhere with your investigation?' Ron asked.

Harry shrugged. 'I'll let you know if I find anything.'

'Okay. Coming to the match next Sunday?'

'Yeah, if I can get Veronica to swap shifts. I'll owl you.'

'Great. Hey, George, get us a packet of salt 'n' vinegar crisps, will you?'

Harry sipped his beer and wondered if he ought to warn Hermione before her entire life went tits-up.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry was adding a helping of cauliflower to his roast pork and apple sauce when a tingle on the back of his neck told him that he was being watched. It had been many years since anyone in the Ministry canteen had thought him worthy of observation. He was cautious enough to entirely ignore the watcher until he collected his dessert, then allowed his gaze to sweep the room as he returned to his seat between two of his fellow Aurors. There, the man was sitting alone at the back of the room. He wore the deep blue robe of the Department of Mysteries and looked totally unremarkable. Of average size, with brown hair going grey, he was just the kind of person whom you immediately forgot. Harry held onto that thought and glanced across the room so that the wizard was right in the corner of his vision. His eye kept trying to slide away, as if the man was coated in something slippery. A Notice-Me-Not spell, and a very good one. Harry's heart gave a little skip. He tried to envision the man with a hooked nose and black eyes, and his brain threw out memories of Ginny, his children, Ron, a dragon, his over-flowing in-basket, his new owl and a recent meal of prawn salad.

'No you don't, you bastard,' he muttered and sliced into his lemon meringue pie.

'Pardon?' Auror Pearce enquired.

Harry gestured with his spoon. 'Is anyone in the room using a Glamour or a Notice-Me-Not?'

Pearce looked around and shook his head. 'Nope.'

'You sure?'

'Course I'm sure, Potter! Why?'

'Just checking. Have you heard back from Magi-forensics about the Brazier case yet?'

'Yeah, it was definitely the cousin; her signature was over everything in the room...'

As Harry and his co-workers left the canteen to return to work, Harry made a detour past the stranger, who was drinking his tea and reading the _Daily Prophet_.

'Unfathomable Peel,' he said pleasantly, 'a word some time, if I may?' He gave his breezy public smile and walked away before the man had a chance to reply. He was fairly certain that Snape/Steed/Peel would not come to see him. That did not matter. The message had been delivered.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Two days later, Hermione tapped at his open office door. 'Shall I come back?' she asked.

'No, we've finished.' Harry handed over a bundle of case files to the waiting Aurors and they went out, shuffling through the parchments and attempting to persuade their most junior colleague to take the surveillance shift that coincided with an international Quidditch semi-final on Saturday.

'What can I do for you, Unspeakable Weasley?' Harry asked. Hermione scowled and he glanced at the door, which obligingly shut and warded itself. She sat down in the visitor's seat and folded her arms. Harry interlaced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his big, comfortable boss's chair. She snorted.

'Did Ron tell you to do it?' she asked eventually.

'He asked me.'

'That's how you treat your friends, is it? Spying on them?'

'If they don't trust me enough to confide in me, then it might happen like that, yes.'

She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Harry raised an eyebrow at her. 'For god's sake, Harry! We're grown-ups, we're allowed a private life!'

'I don't think Rose and Hugo are grown up yet,' Harry said, keeping his voice light and free from the anger that threatened to overwhelm his control.

'Did you make that point to my darling husband?' Hermione asked with the kind of vicious sweetness that Harry had almost forgotten she was capable of.

'Repeatedly.'

She subsided a little and Harry wondered if their love for their children would be enough to salvage the situation when Ron found out.

'Hermione,' Harry said, leaning forward and trying to project an aura of calm sympathy, while he wanted to grab the woman and shake her, 'Really? _Snape?_ '

Hermione blushed and stared down at the floor. 'I know!' she said then scrubbed her face with both hands. 'I couldn't say anything. I knew if I'd told you, you'd demand to see him...'

'And of course he wouldn't demean himself by speaking to Harry Potter, would he? He might be brave but he's still a coward when it comes to relationships.'

Her brown eyes flashed in anger.

'What are you accusing me of, Harry Potter?'

'Playing with fire,' he muttered. 'Sorry, Hermione, that was uncalled for, but surely you know how dangerous he is?'

'Oh, please! Says the man who broke into Gringotts, used Unforgiveables and was prepared to kill? You're accusing _me_ of being morally dubious?'

'Don't start.'

They stared at one another in silence for a while, then Hermione seemed to give herself a little shake and stood up. 'It really isn't any of your business, is it?'

She walked out with her head high, and her fragility made his heart ache.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry knew all about the Avalon Inn. Located at the far end of Knockturn Alley, it made the Hog's Head look classy and was the kind of place where you could rent a room by the hour. Any reporter or junior Auror who set foot in the door was likely to find themselves sitting outside with a headache and a suspicious gap in their memories – if they were lucky and the proprietor was in a magnanimous frame of mind. The Ministry had made occasional attempts to close it down, but then someone with a little intelligence would point out that there ought to be somewhere in Wizarding London for hags and vampires to socialise; that it was easier to locate felons if there was a central meeting place for them; and that the place was so cheap it provided a bed for those magical folk who would otherwise be sleeping in dustbins or causing havoc on the Muggle streets. Besides, if they had problems with the place, they could always send in Potter, since the current innkeeper was an old mate of his.

'Hello, Dung,' Harry said, cautiously leaning his elbow on the least sticky area of the bar. Mundungus Fletcher started, wiped his mouth and put down his pint tankard.

'Just tapped a new barrel,' he muttered, 'gotta test it, haven't I?'

'Naturally.'

'It's me own profits I'm drinking!' Mundungus said belligerently, as if Harry had accused him of something illegal. Harry shrugged. Mundungus grunted and waved his wand to float a plate of something bloody and glistening across to the table in the corner, where two hags were playing dominoes with hand-carved bone tiles. 'What d'you want, Potter?' he grumbled, but there was a glitter of amusement in his eyes.

'Firewhisky, just a single.'

'Off duty, are we?'

Something tiny, with a lot of legs, twitched and died inside the shot glass as the firewhisky landed on it. Harry worked on the assumption that anything that came into contact with the flaming spirit would be thoroughly sterilised but he still carried a bezoar in his pocket. He handed over his sickles and turned the glass so that he could drink out of the cleanest part of the rim.

'So, whaddya want this time?' Dung wiped his sleeve over his mouth, glanced at the resulting damp smear and dismissed it as not worthy of further notice. 'I keep tellin' yer, Potter, we 'aven't got any thieves or murderers in 'ere, just innocent folk wot the rest of the Wizarding lot fink are beneath 'em.'

'Of course,' Harry agreed. He took a sip of firewhisky, sieving it through his teeth with an ease born of long experience of drinking in magical dives. 'I wouldn't dare to suggest otherwise, Dung. I'm looking for an Unfathomable by the name of Peel. I believe he keeps a room here?'

Dung's jowls quivered as he gave a little shudder.

'Yeah, right, you can 'ave 'im, gives me the creeps. Always looking at yer like he's reading yer mind.'

Which he probably was, Harry surmised. The git was paranoid, with a habit of creeping around inns and listening at doors. No doubt he regularly checked if anyone had asked about him, and reassured himself that Mundungus had no suspicion of his true identity.

'I just want a little word.'

'Room twenty six, top of the back stairs. Don't tell 'im I told yer.'

Harry nodded and set off up the narrow, creaking staircase. There was a smell of boiled cabbage and unwashed humanity. A scrawny cat streaked across the landing and turned to watch suspiciously as he unlatched the door that led to the upper storey. A ghost lingered in a narrow passageway, opening and closing its mouth like a guppy. It was very old and its edges were diffusing, as if the spirit was too exhausted to hold even the lightest of ectoplasm together.

'Where?' it breathed, 'Where is she? Where?' then melted back into the room that it had haunted for a millennium, searching for someone whom it could no longer name.

Harry recognised the feeling of déjà vu that the place always gave him. It reminded him of the Shrieking Shack, and that was a place he had no desire to revisit in mind or body. Snape was permanently seared into his memory, lying on the floor in a huddle of black robes and blood. Yet this time he envisioned Snape lying in a similar position upon a bed, his black robes and white shirt laid open like a magpie's wings, and his face was serene and lax – not in death, but in the transfiguring moments that follow sex. Harry shook himself. He must be going mad – he had never seen Snape unclothed in his life, so where had that image come from?

When he raised his hand to knock at number twenty six, he heard Snape's unmistakeable voice.

'Go _away_ , Potter!'

'No,' Harry said, pushing open the door. The room had a small, multi-paned window that showed the opposite roofs and a segment of the night sky. As he looked around, it hit Harry like a punch in the gut that he had imagined Snape languid and sated upon this very bed, with its grey pillow-slip and striped blanket.

Snape sat reading by candlelight, and the fact that he wore reading glasses perched upon his hooked nose, and that he had caught his long greying hair back with a leather lace, seemed both boringly domestic and unbearably endearing.

'What do you want, Auror Potter?' Snape placed his book face down upon the small table.

'To talk to you.'

'I have no desire to talk to _you_ , so go away.' There was such weariness in his voice, such a weight of despondency that Harry's heart seemed to turn over inside him.

Snape had always succeeded in wrong-footing Harry – resenting his fame before Harry had even known what had made him famous, appearing to be his enemy yet remaining, to the last, his most staunch defender. Now, after Harry had steeled himself to face the man's righteous rage, he found Snape to be just a man, as vulnerable and fragile as Hermione or Harry himself. The indestructible Snape of Harry's childhood had always been an artificial thing, built from desperation and willpower and magic.

Harry had to grope through his uncertainty to hold on to what really mattered.

'Why Hermione?' he demanded. 'Why are you wrecking her life?'

Snape shrugged elaborately, as if attempting to appear unconcerned. 'Her husband is a lout. She is an adult witch, capable of making her own decisions, and does not need you to defend her precious honour – oh, I forgot! You get off on rushing to the defence of hapless witches, don't you? From your second year, when that silly little red-haired bint fell foul of an accursed diary and you ended by facing down a basilisk? Remind me, isn't she the one you rescued from her harridan of a mother by marrying her? But never mind her, we were speaking of the insufferable swot, weren't we, and her husband the oafish sidekick?'

'Hold on!' Harry held up both hands. 'What the hell's got into you, Snape? Are you still all bitter and twisted over the things I did as a kid? That was decades ago, can't you ever let go of anything?'

Snape got to his feet, his robes sliding around his legs and then flaring out as he advanced. He bared his discoloured teeth.

'It's always about you, isn't it, Potter? As if I ever _cared_ what you did! Or are you jealous? After the little know-it-all for yourself, are you? I always thought there was more to that friendship than met the eye!’ Snape seemed to quiver with the force of his hostility and Harry could feel powerful magic washing like heat against his face.

The bastard knew exactly how to push Harry's buttons even without using Legilimency. Harry balled his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms in an attempt to distract himself from his rising anger. Snape stalked around him, turning so that he watched Harry constantly, and pushed the door wide open upon its creaking hinges. 'If you want her, Potter, go and shag her, and keep the irritating little witch out of my hair! Now get out!'

Incandescent with a rage that was fuelled by so many conflicting emotions that he was practically vibrating on the spot, Harry seized the lapels of Snape's robe. The momentary flash of surprise in those black eyes was remarkably satisfying, but Harry realised that he had to act fast. Snape twitched his arm and the movement brought his wand down into his hand, so Harry did the only thing that suddenly seemed both obvious and right. He yanked hard on Snape's robe, crushing their mouths together, and kissed him.

Harry's head seemed to fill with a cacophony of voices. His own shocked 'I'm kissing Snape! Fuck, I'm kissing _Snape!_ ' was almost drowned by a fantasy in which Snape called his name, his _first_ name, in a breathy groan of pleasure, and Harry whispered the Parseltongue hiss of 'Severus Snape,' while kissing his way down the man's exposed throat.

'Is sexual assault a recognised Auror interrogation technique nowadays?' Snape demanded against his mouth. Harry was too shaken to respond straight away, stunned by the recognition of Snape's shadowy figure in his most erotic dreams. Even as he realised that he was leaving himself vulnerable, Snape reached up, grabbed a handful of Harry's hair and used it to hold his head still as he deepened the kiss.

There was such desperation in that agile tongue, as if Snape wanted to taste every inch of Harry's mouth. Dazed with shock and his own rapidly increasing arousal, Harry released Snape's robe and slid his arms around Snape's taut, narrow ribcage. He was completely unprepared for Snape to move his hands down, place the palms against his chest, and shove so hard that he was propelled out of the door to crash against the opposite wall.

'Get out!' Snape snarled, his face contorting with fury, 'and never come back!' The door slammed with the echoing finality that indicated heavy-duty wards, leaving Harry sitting in the corridor, staring at the peeling paint and wondering what the fuck had just happened.

 

oooOOOooo

  
'What on earth are you doing here?' Hermione's voice brought him out of his daze and he stared up into her shocked face. Harry clambered to his feet and flicked his wand to wipe off the dust from his robes.

'I think I've been Snaped,' he said.

Hermione folded her arms, her eyes narrowing. 'Harry Potter, if you've been following me, killer canaries will be the least of your problems!'

'No, I bloody haven't!' he snapped. 'I needed to speak to Snape, all right? For Merlin's sake, finding out after all these years that the bastard wasn't even dead –'

'What? Harry, you _knew_ he was alive! What's wrong with you? We testified at his trial, for god's sake!'

He stared at her, shaken out of his anger for a moment. 'Right… Snape's alive. Yes. Well, he's not in a very good mood, so be careful.'

'Thank you for that,' she said through gritted teeth, knocking on the door. 'Now go away, please.'

How could she just stand there waiting for Snape (her lover! God, that was impossible, surely?), aware that Harry knew that she was about to sleep with Snape, and he was left outside, alone, his fingernails digging into his palms and his whole being on fire from that illicit kiss. How could he _desire_ Snape so much? It was seldom spoken of and never accepted, that wizards could have sex with other wizards or witches with other witches. It was not something that Harry had wanted or needed, so why did his lips tingle, why was his cock so hard that it ached, why did he feel so angry and needy and confused and empty? He wanted to shake Hermione until her teeth rattled, he wanted to hit Snape right on his smug, sneering mouth. Hit him and throw him down and then – what?

Harry clattered down the stairs, knowing that something was terribly wrong and wondering how to continue his investigation if he could not even trust his own mind. For the first time, he felt that Hermione's affair would affect not only Ron and Hermione and their children, but would have repercussions on his life and the lives of Ginny, Jamie, Al and Lily.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry put down the little leather-bound book and stared at the wall. Something was indeed very wrong. There were gaps in the heavily warded, totally private Filo-Magic that Hermione had given him on his first promotion. No-one had access to it apart from him, and if anyone else had tried to read it, there would be subtle indications of their attempts within its binding. The missing pages had been replaced by spare sheets from the back and they contained only his professional appointments. He would not have noticed had he not been looking for anomalies. There were weeks without any personal notes at all, including the day of Lily's sixth birthday. There was no way he would have forgotten her birthday – he needed no reminders of the dates of the births of any of his kids – but there was nothing to indicate the time of her party, whether it was at home or at the Burrow, or where he and Ginny had bought her gifts.

By the age of six, Lily had been taught to read by Molly and she had asked for books from the "My Little Unicorn" series for her birthday. Ginny had bought her a sparkly toy broom to replace the one Lily had inherited from Al, which Lily had claimed was 'flown all to bits' besides being a completely uncool colour. Harry remembered clearly how Lily and Rose had squabbled over who got to fly the broom. Victoire had been all grown-up and sorted out the argument by taking Rose up with her on her big-girl broom to make amends. Harry remembered the party, but he had no idea what time it had taken place, or even which day, since Lily's birthday had fallen in midweek when both Harry and Ginny were at work. Come to think of it, hadn't he arrived late, and been scolded in turn by Molly, Ginny, Hermione and the birthday girl herself? Not late enough to ruin her day, just too late to see her first flight on the glittery, lavender broom. It had all blown over easily enough, but try as he might, he could not recall _why_ he had run late. It must have been a very important reason, since he always booked annual leave for his kids' birthday parties. There was nothing in his diary for that day, and nothing in his head except an empty void, right up until his tardy arrival at the Burrow.

He Summoned parchment and quill and went back through the diary, noting every possible abnormality. Then he sat back and stared at the results, trying to draw a conclusion that did not make him turn cold and sweaty with foreboding.

There were two gaps. The first was when he was a trainee Auror, and the spaces included days when he was apparently on duty, but he had removed any record of what he had done. The second gap, many years later, covered only his private activities including Lily's birthday party, and lasted for four months.

His biggest concern was that he was the only person who could have edited his Filo-Magic. It had been warded for him by Hermione, for Merlin's sake! Even though she had been an inexperienced young Unspeakable at the time, her spellcraft was invariably immaculate. He was forced to the inescapable conclusion that something very important had been cut out of his life, and he had either gone along with its abstraction or removed it himself. And instinct told him that it involved Snape.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry always worried at mysteries like a Crup with a bone, but this time he was forced to do so in secret. His usual sounding board was Hermione, but her relationship with Snape made seeking her advice inadvisable. Snape was the key, and it took only a couple of hours in the Ministry's most highly guarded archives to find that the initial gap in Harry's records covered the arrest and trial for war-crimes and the subsequent exoneration of Jonathan Steed. Steed's trial was held _in camera_ , in front of Kingsley and hand-picked members of the Wizengamot, due to Steed's war-time role as a spy. His evidence was vital in the hunt for the remaining Death Eaters, and thus was highly confidential.

Harry dropped the files back into their warded safe and collapsed into a chair. _That_ was why Steed had disappeared, then! Someone had identified him as Snape and kicked up a fuss – Harry had a suspicion that the 'someone' might have been either himself or Hermione – and Snape had been called to account for his actions. His disappearance was sloppily handled – by an inexperienced young Auror? – but after his release, Kingsley must have ensured that his new persona, as the Unfathomable Emrys Peel, was watertight as long as he used an effective Glamour.

Why the hell had Snape not gone abroad, or found himself a cottage in the country from which to start an owl-order potions business? Why was he running the risk of someone else identifying him – after all, almost everyone in the British Wizarding community had attended Hogwarts and no-one who was taught by Snape would ever forget him, would they? Unless they were Obliviated. Harry groaned and tugged at his hair with both hands. Hermione had known Snape's secret and it looked as if Harry had known it, too, so who had Obliviated him? It could not have been Hermione, she was too loyal and not terribly good at keeping secrets – even Ron was suspicious about the current skeleton in her closet, although she was no doubt being advised by Snape. If Snape himself had wiped Harry's memories, then Harry must have submitted to the Obliviation to the extent of removing all reference to Snape from his private diary.

Was that why Snape had seemed so angry? Had he insisted that he and Harry cut all ties and made Harry extract him, like a bad tooth, from his life? But why? He obviously had no problem retaining links with Hermione. (The memory of him with Hermione made Harry's teeth grind together.) What the hell was Snape playing at? And why did even thinking about the infuriating wizard make Harry feel a frisson of sexual arousal on top of his anger? Why had he dreamed about Snape in that dreadful, sordid room? Hot on that question came another glimpse of Snape, this time on his knees. What outlandish stretch of the imagination could ever bring Snape to kneel before Harry Potter? That was an inversion of the laws of nature, surely! Yet there he was, his black robes pooled around him as he sank gracefully to the dusty floor, and reached out with a thin-fingered hand and – oh!

Harry clutched at his groin, leaning forward as he recalled the feeling of those cool, deft fingers closing around his cock, followed by the slick heat of Snape's mouth. What was _wrong_ with him? He pulled out his wand and in a rush of Gryffindor bravado, pointed it at his own head and whispered, ' _Finite incantatem!_ '

There was a moment in which he wondered whether he had made a terrible mistake, as his mind filled with a dazzle of light and shade, snatches of voices, the touch of a hand, but then it settled back into its previous configuration with the unwelcome addition of a pounding headache.

He carefully warded the door to the archive, returned to his own office and downed an analgesic potion from the first-aid cabinet, before sitting at his desk and glowering at his page of notes. If Snape had Obliviated him, he had done it very badly. Therefore, Snape had _not_ Obliviated him, because Snape was a master of mind-magic and would not have made that kind of error. The inescapable conclusion was that Harry had Obliviated himself, made a cock-up of it, and was regaining the memories. Which ought to be impossible. Unless… He jumped to his feet, crammed the notes into his pocket and grabbed a handful of Floo powder from the mantelpiece.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry visited the Headmistress regularly, both in his official capacity as member of the Board of Governors of Hogwarts and also as a friend. She was busy, as usual, but waved him through into her office.

'I was just about to attend a parents' meeting, but you're welcome to wait.'

'It's ok, I want to have a walk around the grounds, if you don't mind.'

'Of course I don't mind.' She cocked her head. 'Is there anything I can help with?'

Because this was Minerva, and he trusted her discretion, he took a risk. 'Do you know what happened to Snape after the war?'

She might be a canny old Scot but she was a true Gryffindor and the slight stiffening of her posture told him the answer before she even opened her mouth.

'I know that he didn't die, Harry.' She narrowed her eyes, her gimlet gaze spearing him as sternly as when she had been his Head of House and he a rebellious teen. 'You've asked me this before.'

'I wondered if I had.'

She clicked her tongue. 'Don't tell me that snake Obliviated you?'

'If he did, it was with my consent,' he assured her. 'Honestly, Minerva, I doubt if even he could Obliviate me against my will nowadays.'

She gazed fondly at him and patted his arm. 'Sometimes I forget how far you've travelled from that little waif who first arrived at Hogwarts. Now, I must go, I have parents to meet. Do join me later for a wee dram, won't you?'

Harry followed her down the spiral staircase and then made his way to one of the less frequented side doors. He cast a mild Notice-Me-Not charm to deter students, but he met no-one except an incurious toad. He walked across the lawn in the gathering darkness to where a white tomb glimmered beside the lake. A late bird sang, its voice almost unbearably pure and poignant across the still water.

'Professor Dumbledore,' Harry whispered, 'I'm sorry. I don't want to disturb your remains but I've been an idiot again.'

He gently levitated the lid of the marble sarcophagus by an inch and wordlessly Summoned the Elder Wand. It whispered through the air and settled into his hand like a living thing, warm and thrumming with power. He caressed it as if stroking a pet cat; this pale, slim wand that Dumbledore had wielded so lightly, given its awesome potential. As Harry's thumb slid along the polished wood, he had a feeling of disconnection, as if a part of him was somewhere else, listening to a voice as smooth and beguiling as whisky. The phrase came to him across a gulf of time, the dim frontier of which could never truly be crossed, for even if a Time Turner carried him back to hear and see, it could not make him into the person who had heard the words for the very first time.

'I want to make love to you.'

Harry's insides clenched as he recognised Snape's silk-and-velvet voice. What had he said in reply? Had his cock lifted in response, as it was lifting now? Had he reacted with the horror that was expected of any red-blooded wizard, propositioned in such a way, or had he shown compassion for the man to whom he owed so much, and told him gently that he was a happily married wizard and such things must not be spoken of again? Had he lied? Or had he spoken the brutal truth that he _wanted_ Snape, wanted to feel his skin, to seize his cock, to know what it was to be held down and penetrated by him.

Harry knew exactly how Snape would speak those precisely enunciated words. He had affected his rounded vowels in his determination to repudiate the flat, northern accent of his upbringing. This was more than a fantasy born of curiosity or desire; it was a fragmentary memory.

His memories of Snape the professor were overlaid by recollections of Snape with Hermione – Snape the sharp and superficial seducer, going through the motions of desire as if using Harry's friend to scratch an itch. Harry realised how little Snape was investing in that relationship, through instinct and experience, but mostly because he knew what Snape's voice sounded like when he was sincere in his desire.

'I want you and I need you.' When had he heard Snape say those words? Had he begged for them, or had they been offered as a gift? What had caused Snape, the introvert, the recluse, the strong and independent soul who had learned the hard way how few were to be trusted with his heart and his loyalty, to whisper words of longing to Harry Potter? Because he _had_ spoken them. Harry remembered them.

He remembered his school days, his complex and conflicted relationship with Snape, his remorse at the man's apparent death, and his attempts to put the past behind himself and get on with life. The blissful day upon which he had married Ginny – had it been blissful? He remembered his relief that things were going right at last, his happiness that he was bonding himself forever to the Weasley family, the joy of their friends and Ginny's beaming smile. Then came his fight to prove himself as an Auror (not so easy when he was scrutinised so closely by his colleagues, the press and the public) and the births of his wonderful children.

Harry closed his eyes and allowed images of his kids' faces to pop into his mind. James was bright and open and loud, a lover of Quidditch and George's Wheezes, a risk-taker and a loyal friend who wore his heart on his sleeve. Lily was her mother's daughter: lively, affectionate and occasionally tempestuous, clever and witty; she lit up a room by entering it. Albus Severus was Harry's Slytherin child, the sensitive, watchful one with a wicked sense of humour and a very private side to him. Al felt deeply but did not always show it. Harry imaged their reactions if they ever found out… what? That their father had _feelings_ for another man? That he fancied the not-so-late, great Headmaster Snape?

Imaginary James screwed up his face and exclaimed, 'Gross! Eww, Dad, you're kidding, right? Come on, are you up for a quick two-a-side Quidditch game out in the orchard?'

Imaginary Lily frowned at him. 'But what about Mum? What about us? Don't you care about us anymore?' Her lip began to quiver in the manner that threatened a storm of weeping. 'What will happen to us?'

Imaginary Al gazed at him seriously. 'Dad, even when you were wrong, you were always brave, weren't you? No-one ever called you a coward.'

Harry closed his eyes, those last words marching across his mind in an echo of his own youthful voice. It seemed his recklessness knew no bounds, even after all these years. And the wand, which had always conspired _with_ him, grew suddenly heavy and hot against his palm, as though it no longer wished to contain his secrets. Inevitable, really. Harry sighed and raised the tapered end to his head. ' _Finite incantatem,_ ' he whispered.

 

oooOOOooo

  
He did not know how he managed to get himself home after returning the wand to its resting place in Dumbledore's skeletal hands. Unable to cast his Patronus, he owled an apology to Minerva, saying that he had been called away and he would catch up with her soon. For the first time ever, he was glad that all three of his children were at Hogwarts and he was alone in the house. He toed off his boots and collapsed onto the sofa.

'Big boys don't cry,' he told himself, as he recalled his first sight of Snape after the war, furious at having his identity confirmed by Potter, of all people – an idealistic young Potter who was convinced that Snape needed his apology. Then came the trial, in which Harry had stood up and proclaimed his belief in Snape's innocence and was shocked when Snape failed to be either grateful or polite. Their interactions had been everything the now-mature Harry could have predicted; as if Snape _wanted_ Potter's inept gratitude. Snape had aided him against Voldemort for his own reasons and Harry's peace of mind was irrelevant to him now. Snape was no longer beholden to anyone and he resented owing his freedom to the war hero.

Then they had met again in the Ministry, as adults, and this time, Harry had not betrayed Snape's identity, but had quietly acknowledged him and walked away.

After that came the Fitzherbert case. An unlicensed apothecary was selling potions spiked with Muggle drugs to Magical teens. The potions were addictive and even more dangerous in high dosages than they would be to Muggles, because the physical side-effects were augmented by magical ones.

He could still see the empty faces of the youngsters caught in the insidious grip of _Hero Draught_ or _Pepstacy_ and the worried expressions of the Healers who did not know how to treat them. Harry had three children of his own by then, and much-loved godchildren, nieces and nephews.

He had been sitting quietly in the Avalon Inn, nursing a firewhisky and awaiting an informer from Fitzherbert's gang, when someone slid into the seat beside him. He knew who it was without looking around and wondered at his own lack of surprise.

'Your snitch has been taken out of the game, Auror,' Snape murmured.

'I was afraid of that. Is she dead?'

'I fear so. You've been set up.'

Harry allowed his hand to drop so that the tip of the wand in his sleeve holster made contact with one of the buttons on his uniform robe, activating a Protean charm and alerting his back-up team. 'You'd better go –' he began, but the multiple cracks of Apparation told him that he and Snape were trapped inside a circle of malignant magic. Harry began by shielding his companion as if he were an innocent member of the public, but Snape took down the first of the drug-dealers with a wandless Stunner even as he flicked his wand into his hand. They fought back-to-back as if they had trained that way for years. Once Harry's team arrived, however, their resulting interaction was inevitable.

'Thank you for the warning, Master Peel,' Harry said formally, and Snape nodded, his disguise still securely in place. He must have hooked a Glamour into his magical core, a powerful and subtle piece of charm work.

'You're welcome, Auror.'

An imp of mischief made Harry jerk his head towards Mundungus, currently waving his arms around as he complained to the Auror clean-up squad who were Banishing the debris. 'Join me for a celebratory drink?'

'On duty?'

'My shift finished over an hour ago. If I go back, I'll only get caught up in the report-writing or the back-slapping and I'd rather wind down now and face the paperwork tomorrow. Firewhisky?'

Snape sneered. The expression was out of place on the bland face of Unfathomable Peel.

'Not Fletcher's gut-rot. I've got Ogden's twenty-one-year-old vintage in my room.'

'Lead on!'

And so Harry followed him, up the creaky stairs and past the mournful ghost, and they drank together for the first time – their first meeting of many.

Unfathomable Peel worked in potions research and it made sense for Senior Auror Potter to occasionally request his expertise. Harry remembered the warm glow of satisfaction when "Peel" began treating him as a fellow professional, offering suggestions rather than issuing orders, listening to him, and eventually, wonder of wonders, asking his opinion. Their meetings were infrequent but all the more treasured for that. Snape's friendship became a precious secret. Harry recalled initially outing Jonathan Steed as Snape, recognising the wizard even beneath his Glamour by the cadences of his voice and the way he moved and the faint scent of potions and aftershave. He had no intention of making the same mistake again; he did not tell Ginny, Hermione or Ron that he knew Snape in his most recent persona.

'You're a mole,' Harry remarked.

Snape took a sip of his whisky. 'You mean I wear black and work below ground?' The skin around his eyes tightened slightly. Harry had come to recognise when he was suppressing a smile.

'If a wannabe Dark Lord ever attempts to infiltrate the Ministry, Kingsley has his spy already in place.'

'Or, of course,' Snape said, casually stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles beneath the table, 'if Shacklebolt decides to take over the world, he knows that at least two of the people watching him are capable of bringing him down.' He cocked an eyebrow at Harry, which was not quite as effective when he wore the face of Emrys Peel, but came close. Harry was getting used to seeing the blander, more ordinary face that Snape wore almost all the time, but was surprised at how much he missed the real thing.

He remembered all too well the agony and the glory of falling deeply in love for the first time in his life. He remembered how his wife, his job, even his children no longer took priority in his thoughts, how he had hated himself for longing for a glimpse of Snape/Peel's back through the morning crowd and how he watched the clock's creeping hands until he dared to leave work and hurry through the rain to the Avalon Hotel, where Snape waited for him.

'I want to touch you,' Harry had whispered. 'The real you, not this stranger.' Safe behind the multiple wards and trip-jinxes of his dreary room, Snape dared to release the spells that bound his new identity to his magical core. Snape had raised his wand and unravelled the complex charms, and Harry ran his fingers across the angular cheekbones and determined jaw, the hooked nose and the narrow lips of the Half-Blood Prince.

'I love you,' he said into the darkness, as they lay together in the afterglow, sweaty limbs entangled. 'Is that really so wrong, to fall in love?'

'Yes,' Snape had whispered in reply. 'I have always found it to be so.'

 

oooOOOooo

  
It was a frantic, feverish time, of tumultuous highs and plunging lows, of guilt and exhaustion and moments of joy. Always, beneath it all, Harry knew it could not last. He would be found out one day, and his family would be torn apart.

Everything came to a head the day James fell off his broom at the Burrow. Molly tried to Floo Harry and discovered that he was not in the office as she expected, but off duty. Her Patronus found him on the staircase on his way up to Snape's room – ten minutes later, and there would have been a lot of explaining to do. Harry thought it unlikely that the silvery she-bear would have penetrated Snape's massive wards, but if the urgency of the situation had carried it into the room, then he would have either had to destroy the Patronus or Obliviate his mother-in-law. Harry sent the Patronus back to Molly with a message that he was working undercover and would be there as soon as he could get away. He burst into the room where Snape was waiting, the wards cracking aside as they identified him.

'James is hurt, I've got to go to the Burrow. I don't know when I'll be able to make it next.'

Snape put down his book, his face expressionless.

'Then you must go, of course.'

Only later, did Harry wonder if the note of bitter resignation derived from more than disappointment; if even then, Snape knew that their time was coming to an end.

James had a concussion and a broken arm. The Healer whom Arthur called in was one of the best, and within a day, James was over the shock and the pain, running around telling everyone how brave he had been and revelling in the extra attention.

'Boys will be boys,' Molly said fondly. 'It could have been much worse. I'm sorry to have interrupted you off-duty, Harry, but we didn't know how bad the head injury was.'

Ginny frowned. 'I thought you were at work today?'

'I was doing a bit of surveillance,' Harry said, trying to sound casual while his heart thudded in his chest. 'I was having a look around this really seedy place that Mundungus Fletcher has taken over in Knockturn Alley. I didn't want to get him in trouble if there was nothing wrong so I couldn't go in an official capacity or put anything through the report books.'

Ginny pulled a face. 'He was such a dirty, twisty little git! I bet you could get him for something if you tried.'

'I wasn't trying to get him for anything because I hope he's going straight!' And running a sleazy old inn where Harry could meet up with Snape with no-one else the wiser.

'Good for you, Harry. Everyone deserves a second chance, even old Dung!' Arthur patted his shoulder. Harry shrugged and nodded, digging his hands into his pockets and hoping that he'd got away with it.

He watched as James strutted back and forth and explained to Al how he had flown so high that he almost caught up with a crow before he fell off. Ginny picked Lily up to nurse her. It was all so normal, so domestic and so completely what Harry had always thought he wanted. His son was fine, his family was all cosy and safe, and he ought to want nothing more than to sit down with his lovely wife and watch his beautiful children. But he wanted to be with Snape. He looked around at them, knowing that he had to choose, that he could no longer go on thinking he could have it all. When he had Apparated to the Burrow fearing that James might die, he had been desperate, willing to bargain with the Fates, blaming himself even though he knew it had been an accident and that Molly and Arthur would lay down their lives before letting harm come to any of their grandchildren. James' accident felt like payback, a warning that Harry would lose everything dear to him unless he mended his ways.

Harry hated that people assumed he got away with things because of his fame, yet wasn't he hoping that when his secret came out, he would get away with it? Fear of the loss of just one of his children had been like a Bludger to his heart; how would he cope with the fear of loss of them all? Ginny, Molly and Arthur would fight on behalf of the kids just as he would, but the Wizengamot would be on their side, not his. His fame would do nothing for him – in fact, it would make it all a thousand times worse. The press would have a field day taking his life apart and his fall from grace would be spectacular. The Weasleys would be justified in keeping away from the furore for the sakes of the children.

This was no occasion for cowardice; Harry Potter had to face a sacrifice as great as any he had made to take down Voldemort, and this time, only one other person would ever know.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Snape had not even shown surprise, as if he, too, had simply been waiting for Destiny to kick him in the teeth.

'Go, then,' he had said, his head bowed and his lank hair falling forward to shield his face. 'Go back to your wife and kids, Potter.'

'Don't you even care?' Harry demanded, once he had regained control of his hanging jaw.

'What difference does it make if I do? Does it please you to think that you've left me broken-hearted?' Snape slowly raised his head, and his expression made Harry step backwards involuntarily. 'If it makes you happy, then, yes, believe that I care. Believe that I shall waste away, pining for your arse, like a Victorian maiden jilted at the altar. Think whatever the fuck you like!' He got to his feet with the slow, deliberate pace of a predator. 'Just remember this – if you go, I shall never take you back! Under no circumstances will I put myself through this again.'

Harry had left without another word. Moving in a daze, in which he kept all his emotions clamped down deep inside himself, he removed all trace of Snape from his Magifax. He Incendio-ed the incriminating pages and Banished the ashes, making rough copies of his professional appointments to fill the gaps. Then he made himself a Portkey from a pencil with a carefully balanced trigger. Next, he Apparated to Hogwarts and slid through the wards wearing his Invisibility Cloak, making his way to the glimmering white shape of Dumbledore's tomb. He Summoned the Elder Wand and cast a time-delayed charm to replace it within Dumbledore's hands, then used it to obliterate all his post-war memories of Snape. He fell to his knees as the wand whipped away out of his grasp, and the Portkey was triggered by his loss of balance, and spun him away to his own bed, where he collapsed, dizzy and sick with a loss that he could not even name.

 

oooOOOooo

  
Harry stared at the ceiling, blinking away tears that ran down the sides of his face into his hair. He had fallen in love with Snape, and he had tried to use the Elder Wand to remove all trace of that relationship, but the wand had been unable to harm him. Instead, it had hidden the memories deep inside him. He might have suspected that could happen, if he hadn't been so desperate to cut the pain out of his soul. And Snape – no wonder Snape had snarled and cursed him, if he had fallen for Harry as hard as Harry had fallen for him. And Hermione – Harry gritted his teeth against the misery of _those_ memories – had Snape's relationship with her been a way for him to retain some sort of tenuous connection with Harry? Had he sought comfort with anyone else in the meantime? Harry suspected not. The bastard was using Hermione, but he was doing so not because he was a self-serving prick, but because he was hurting. As Harry was hurting. And Hermione, too, in her increasingly miserable marriage, and Ron, in his own way, seeking comfort with his Quidditch floozies.

There was nothing Harry could think of that wouldn't make things worse. He had no right to interfere between Hermione and Snape. He had known years before that he must never confess to having fallen in love, and yes, to having had sex with another wizard. He could not do that to his kids. How could James, with his ambitions to play professional Quidditch, or sensitive Al, or his beautiful, carefree Lily, handle the disgrace? How would he cope when the Weasleys turned against him, when exposure of his disgrace would lose him his job, his home, his marriage and his family?

Harry's emotions felt as vivid and raw as when he had first raised the Elder Wand to his head. He had not given himself the chance to process his loss, to assimilate it into the sum of his experiences and allow the sharp edges to dull beneath the trivia of everyday life. He had trapped himself, like a fly in the amber of his anguish. No wonder he had begun dreaming – his subconscious sensed he was coming close to Snape again and his memories and his pain began bleeding out.

Harry had taken a risk by messing with his own head. It was sheer luck he had not done himself damage that could be picked up in his routine medicals, because Aurors were regularly checked for evidence of tampering with their memories. He was equally lucky that Ginny or Hermione had not picked up on his forgetfulness. Unless it wasn't luck at all, but the Elder Wand rearranging his memories to protect him as best it could?

Snape had vowed that he would not take Harry back; returning to him was not an option while Harry's career and family were still vulnerable. Harry had to either learn to live with his loss, or return to Hogwarts and allow the Elder Wand to erase both the glory and grief of their bittersweet affair. Yet there was a high chance that the memories would once again seep up from the wells of his subconscious mind, and he had a hot, guilty hope that when they did, his kids would be grown and he and Ginny would have faced the dissolution of their marriage, so that he might sunset his life with something he truly desired.

Harry closed his eyes and remembered the grimy bedroom in the Avalon Inn, the flickering candlelight and Snape's deft, pale hand tracing the scar upon Harry's forehead.

'I remember,' Harry had begun, about to relate an incident in his hunt for Horcruxes, but Snape touched a finger to his lips, silencing him.

'Remember this instead,' he had whispered, and replaced the finger with his own mouth. Their first kiss was uncomplicated by guilt and anxiety; all that would come later. Harry had been aware of the pounding of his heart, stunned that anything so unacceptable could feel so right and good. 'Remember Avalon.'

Or at least that was Harry's dearest hope as he crept back to Hogwarts under cover of his father's cloak, opened the white tomb and pressed the Elder Wand against his temple. The wood warmed to him instantly, thrumming with a familiar and powerful magic. Perhaps it knew what he was about to do, just as it had before. Harry closed his eyes, trying to breathe through the heaviness that had already begun to settle around his heart. There was no other choice – not for him.

' _Obliviate._ '

 

oooOOOooo

  
The girl tugged on Harry's sleeve, her bright hair shining in the sunlight like strands of copper. 'Granddad, can we go and look at the brooms? Please? They've got some really old famous ones in the window – there's a Comet and a Firebolt!' Her younger brother immediately took up the refrain and Harry gazed down at their eager faces, for a moment recalling other children and other times.

'Yes, if you stay together,' he said, then called after their retreating backs, 'and don't forget to meet your grandmother in the ice-cream parlour at twelve o'clock!'

He shoved his hands into his robe pockets and wandered down the street, towards the dark alley that had resisted fifty years of refurbishments and improvements and clean-up campaigns. Even after his retirement, Harry liked to keep an eye on things in Knockturn Alley, although he suspected that nowadays he cut more of a tragi-comic Mad-Eye Moody figure than a heroic Chief Auror.

The ancient inn huddled in the gloom of taller buildings, shored up like an old drunk between its younger companions. Harry did not know who ran it now, but he felt a subtle pull, as if something important had happened there long ago, that he would remember if he only tried hard enough. But he neither went in nor met anyone, only stared up at a small, mullioned window. From somewhere, perhaps in his head, he heard a voice whispering to him.

 _'Remember Avalon, Harry…'_

A frisson of déjà vu washed through him like cold water. He could almost feel the hint of a deep pain, the wisp of a long-buried memory, the voice to which he could not quite put a name. He wanted to reach out to it, to investigate it, but before he could, it was gone.

With a reluctance he didn't understand, Harry turned and walked away, back to where his family awaited him.

 

-The End-

  
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